A hunger strike by 3,000 students in Beijing had grown to a protest
of more than a million as the injustices of a nation cried for reform.
For seven weeks the people and the People’s Republic, in the
person of soldiers dispatched by a riven Communist Party, warily eyed
each other as the world waited. When this young man simply would not
move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero
was born. A second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush
the man, and instead drove his killing machine around him. Soon this
dream would end, and blood would fill Tiananmen. But this picture
had shown a billion Chinese that there is hope.